Chicken Soup for the Soul by Amy Newmark & Breena Clarke

Author:Amy Newmark & Breena Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Price of Living the White Life

It’s important to me that youth everywhere, no matter their race, religion, or gender, know that anything is possible with perseverance.

~Ibtihaj Muhammad

I pay $2,340 a month in rent. This is just one of the prices we pay in the Black middle class to escape the Black and brown communities we’re from. The idea of raising my brown children on the Southside of Chicago scared me. Not only would I have to constantly worry about their physical safety, I had to worry about the quality of education in our zip code.

Our area wasn’t terrible. We lived less than a mile from one of Chicago’s prestigious universities, and just barely over a mile from the Obamas’ Southside home. Yet, the school district in this area was one no white parent would send their children to, and one I rejected as well.

My academic experience, especially in my formative years, was in the private school system. My middle-class parents could afford that luxury. We did for a while, sending three children to the same private school. But the $10,000 price tag for preschool for my three-and-a-half-year-old was the last straw. We decided to leave our African American community and head west to the suburbs.

The tree lined streets, the big houses, the starry nights, the quiet. Wow, did it seem worth it. Until the daylight came, and we got the look. We all know the look: “Oh, the new neighbors are Black.” Then came the probing conversations: “So, what do you do for a living?” “Where did you move from?’ And my favorite: “Are you renters or buyer?” Yep. Always protecting their investment.

Now, all the neighbors weren’t like this. They just never engaged. They watched but didn’t speak. I was okay with that. I got used to the looks and the subtle interrogations. I was here for the safety and the education and could deal with the colonized mentality of the suburbs.

My family and I lived with the challenges of being in a white community. My children were getting the education I desired them to have, without the onerous sticker price. It was a sacrifice my husband and I were willing to make. We saw the stories on the news about the ever-increasing inner-city violence. Not my kids, I thought. They will be able to walk to school, ride their bikes and even go to our downtown area coffee house with their friends. This is exactly what I wanted for my children. So, I thought.

As the years went by, my kids got to do all the things they could never do in our Chicago neighborhood. They hung out at the park and went to the small movie theater with friends. I was even able to accompany my daughter to Wisconsin to see her favorite artist while my thirteen-year-old and my nine-year-old boys took in a movie and lunch solo in our downtown.

I was never worried about their physical safety, but the trauma of being Black in America was ever present.

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